Pittsburgh Pirates Are Rumored to be Front-Runner for Left-Handed Pitcher Jaime Garcia

According to La Prensa (link is in Spanish), the Pittsburgh Pirates have shown a lot of interest 31-year-old left-handed pitcher Jaime Garcia this off-season and they are considered the front-runners to sign him. La Prensa notes that the Milwaukee Brewers and Kansas City Royals have also shown interest, but the Pirates have shown the most interest and they are the most likely landing spot for Garcia.

Garcia split the 2017 season between the Atlanta Braves, Minnesota Twins and New York Yankees, making 27 starts total and posting a 4.41 ERA and a 4.25 FIP in 157 innings, with a 1.41 WHIP and 129 strikeouts. He spent the previous eight seasons with the St Louis Cardinals, where he had a 3.57 ERA and a 1.28 WHIP over 896 innings. In 2016, he had a 4.67 ERA, 4.49 FIP and 1.38 WHIP in 171.2 innings, with 150 strikeouts.

Garcia’s best season was 2015 when he had a 2.43 ERA in 129.2 innings, with a 3.00 FIP and a 1.05 WHIP. He missed part of the season with a groin strain, but has been relatively healthy since then. Prior to 2015, he dealt with a shoulder injury that limited him for the better part of three seasons and he had Tommy John surgery back in 2008. He has thrown over 450 innings the last three seasons, so durability shouldn’t be an issue, but he would need to get back to the 2015 and earlier results to provide solid value.

93 COMMENTS

Breaking News: Pittsburgh Pirates rumored to be in lead for the services of Kenny Powers. Saw his homemade highlight real and were impressed with his machete technique. No other teams are said to be pursuing Powers with one executive even saying, “What? No. The Pirates maybe, but any other team? No, no certainly not. He is fictional, and personally Danny McBride doesn’t appear to be in the best of shape”. Despite the lack of competition the Pirates are rummored to be aggressive in their pursuit of Powers and are prepared to offer a substantial sum to acquire the fictional fallen star. The Pirates project Kenny Powers as a front of the rotation starter for the 2018-2019 season.

If I am thinking of the same Jaime Garcia I have only seen him used as a reliever and a bad one at that. Sounds about right through. Go get us an aging soft tossing pitcher whose arm is held together with crazy glue. Oh, and while you are at it, see if you can find a way to throw in a top 5 prospect for money even though he is a free agent.

NH is stockpiling all of the #4 and #5 pitchers around the league – so that we will only face three good pitchers out of five. This would virtually assure us of not losing 100 games as we would be 64-98

Is he really worth pursuing and potentially blocking young pitchers like Glasnow, Brault, Holmes, Kingham, etc? I think this is another Hudson type of scenario – paying millions when there are viable and cheaper internal options….

I think Pirates are looking for the most “bang for the buck” and they’re not necessarily looking for a SP over a hitter. They probably targeted Garcia speculating that he is possibly the best candidate to have a a bounce back (2015) season. IMO, they see him as a potential 2013 Liriano. NH is looking to place his chips on an undervalued player who could succeed bigtime. That player happens to be a SP.

I don’t see how this moves the needle. They have an over abundance of pitching options that project 3-5 on staff or in Indy. They need to let those guys pitch in the rotation and fill the bullpen vs. spending resources that should go to the offense to even the field per se on the team. I hope they don’t do this to show an appearance of trying.

Why would they want him? Brault is just as good and would not cost much. Must mean that they will move on from Nova and trade him for a bag of peanuts and two of their high end prospects to get out from under his contract. This team is in free fall and I hope it will not last another 20 years???????

Unless the plan is to move Brault and Kuhl or Glasnow to the bullpen, solving the weakness in the pen by signing a starter instead of directly, I agree. I don’t think he’s a significant direct upgrade over anyone.

Though Garcia is a legitimate bounceback candidate, and maybe they think they have a taker for Nova, and would like to save some money going from Nova to Garcia, and get a lefty in the rotation, without an appreciable drop in production.

Even last year he was worth 2.1 fWAR. Two years ago 2.8. I don’t think he’s actually regressed all that much, and his biggest problem being home runs should be masked at least a little bit as a lefty in PNC Park.

The only way this makes sense to me is if Searage is confident he can make the adjustments necessary to get Garcia back to performing as a reliable #3 starter AND if they trade Nova and one or two prospects for someone with some pop in his bat. If Garcia arrives, Nova needs to go. Doesn’t make sense to load up the rotation with two marginal arms.

I really hope that this was sarcasm because Searage can definitely fix pitchers. Glasnow just hasn’t been able to pitch like a major leaguer. You can’t get away with all of the walks in the big leagues.

I like Garcia but I’m not really sure how he is an improvement over the other options in house. Now if they signed him and somehow flipped some of their pitching depth to bring in some help for the offense that might work. Garcia is at least a guy who has seen success in the NL Central.

interesting. I really do like the idea of Garcia in a vacuum the more i think about it, but i just can’t wrap my head around how this team could have ~20 million wrapped up in Nova and Garcia when the offense needs money thrown at it.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think it’s obvious that the sinker-the-hell-out-of-them fad was just that. Particularly over the last two years, there’s simply a limit to how much actual success a pitcher can have on balls in play.

With Garcia in particular, he’s already an extreme fastball pitcher; he just manipulates the ball in many different ways. Seems there’s *at least* as much of a chance that removing this variability, thereby becoming more monotonous and predictable to hitters, could have equally poor results.

Agreed with you per usual. The Pirates still value pitching to contact and generating ground balls as fast as possible. It feels like they are under utilizing/under valuing/under developing our pitchers ability to generate strikeouts and I think its really hamstringing the success of our staff, particularly guys like Garrett Cole and Taillon, who I think in particular could definitely generate more strikeouts. Last time we had a successful staff was led by big strikeout guys like A.J. Burnett and Liriano. Burnett carried the added bonus that he could generate a lot of ground balls as well. This pitching strategy feels analogous to the Pirates limiting strategy on the offensive end in regard to collecting hitters with high OBP and ignoring power. Both strategies can have limited success but I really think you need to be balanced in both areas – get some strikeout pitchers and get some power hitters and mix them with the pitch-to-contact groundballers and the high OBPers. Why limit yourself to one particular strategy? Then the opposition knows what’s coming.

I wonder if the new approach is also a fad, and if the classic “Let pitchers just do what they do best” will win out in the end. It just seems like any approach to make every pitcher throw the same way is going to have limitations.

You mean like the Pirates approach which until very recently(started at least working up in the zone) had been preaching for basically all of their starters to pound the bottom of the zone with a 2 seamer/sinker?

I am confused as to why people think Brault will be a serviceable starter in the major leagues. He maybe serviceable as a mid reliever That you would put in if you were down 5 plus runs. The only STARTING Pitcher prospect worth getting excited about anymore is Keller as he appears to be the real deal. There are guys with stuff in the lower to mid – levels but, as we have seen in recent years, development is an issue for the Pirates with command and control issues seemingly being ignored just as long as the guy throws 95 or higher. It is becoming pervasive.

I wasn’t saying I’m certain Brault will be as good as Garcia is. Garcia’s proven and Brault’s not. Who knows what’ll happen. But still, Brault’s also a lefty and would be at least 5 times cheaper than Garcia. And he had a very very good season in AAA level.

Brault might not have that 2.40 ERA ceiling but 4.40 ERA is an achievable ERA and I’d say Brault deserves some chances, and it’s worth risking it if you look at the money difference. Honestly I would trade Nova and open up a spot for Glasnow and/or Brault. Unless we’re trying to sign a #2-3 starter, I would be opposing any SP acquisitions.

That’s exactly how I felt regarding Trevor Williams and look what he did last year. lol…

My problem with Garcia is, who is he going to replace? Nova? Then I’d be okay with that. But if we aren’t getting rid of Nova, then I don’t want any older, more expensive pitchers taking up spots unless they’re solid #2-3 starters.

This team complains about payroll, yet every year they waste millions by trading for and signing overpaid mediocre veterans – I guess Garcia will be the next one – and he will be gone by the all-star game when he flames out like Niese did….he isn’t good enough to justify this signing. Trade Nova, don’t sign this stiff, and let the likes of Glasnow, Brault, Kingham, Holmes, etc. compete for the final 1-2 spots.

Then use the millions that would be wasted on Garcia by signing some of the better International free agent prospects and actually be a player in that market….for a small market team, that would make a lot more sense.

They can only afford a pitcher like Garcia if they increase their payroll. 100m just doesn’t make it in baseball anymore. All it gives you is a summer of baseball with your vacation starting in October.

I would agree completely with your points here, Jay. Garcia was a very fine pitcher at one time, some three or four years ago. Injuries have made him very questionable in my mind at this point. We’ll see.